Tonight, we're lucky to have Dr. John Carano, which I was thinking at the beginning of this, because he's also Colonel Dr. John Carano, which one goes first? Colonel or doctor if you were doing it?
I don't know. If any of you were here before when he gave his previous lecture on faith and science, it was terrific. It's so terrific we had to have him back again. Anyway, Dr.
Carano is a retired Army Colonel. He is a former professor of Electrical Engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point, which as I understand the department is just known as Juice. He's a Juice Professor. He's a former CEO and president of, I was going to say, how would you describe it?
Pratasic, Diagnostics. But a medical device company that he founded in Austin, Texas, he used to work for dark books and knows all the dark secrets. And he is also executive consultant and no better person to be talking about this deep scientific topic, but also from a Catholic perspective, because he's also, I don't like to use the phrase devout Catholic. I like the phrase practicing Catholic, the role practicing it being about, but we're not right there yet.
So he's a practicing Catholic, so he's a good person to be talking. So anyway, welcome John. So TJ, I want you to know that on LinkedIn, to make things simple so people don't worry if it's Dr. or Colonel or Mr.
or whatever, for my preferred pronoun, you can check this on LinkedIn, it's Sir. So just go with that. Anyway, well, there are few people in the history of scientific achievement that evoke such extreme emotions as the British naturalist Charles Darwin. On the one hand, we have some people of faith, primarily Protestant denominations, but also some Catholics, even clergy, who believe Darwin's theory of evolution attempts to put a stake in the heart of an almighty God.
And on the other hand, and that of course makes people pretty upset, and then on the other hand, we have atheists who believe that Darwin's theory does put a stake in the heart of an almighty God, and they're exuberant at the notion. Both reactions are fundamentally facile and lacking in scientific merit, as we'll soon see. Moreover, both views are inconsistent with the longstanding teachings of the Catholic Church. So while it's true that secular materialists love Darwin and young Earth creationists hate him, both parties miss the point, both parties are fundamentally misguided.
Of course, I'm guilty of playing on these emotions by the provocative choice of my title for the talk, Is it Darwin or God? The title's a non-sequitur. There's no logical need to choose between God and Darwin, or anyone else for that matter. Yet this is precisely the manner in which secular scientists and atheists wish to frame the question.
It is one or the other because in their parochial view, it certainly can't be both. But of course it is both. After all, God created us all, even Darwin. So then, why all the fuss?
Well, to answer that question, let's look at what exactly it is that Darwin did or said to elicit such outrage from some and such adulation from others. Well, Darwin began his groundbreaking work nearly two centuries ago with his five-year voyage on the Beagle. His principle thesis is that all animals on Earth evolved from one ancestor. This is referred to as common descent.
While other life resulted as a consequence of so-called random mutations, followed by adaptation and natural selection, as part of a broader quest for survival, which is often referred to as survival of the fittest. This basic process is what is known as Darwinian evolution, and it's expected to proceed in very, very minute steps over geologically long periods of time. Interestingly, well, Darwin's theory was fundamentally based on the notion of random mutation. Darwin didn't actually understand what was being mutated or what.
That's actually very true. And you can say that, well, that is very impressive, that he figured it out without knowing all the scientific details, or you can say he got lucky. It doesn't really matter. The point is he didn't know all those details.
As we'll see, the thing that's being mutated is DNA, and the associated genes, something which Darwin just didn't have any knowledge of. Nevertheless, what we get after hundreds of millions of years, pretty long time, of evolution is this rather spectacular world of amazing flora and fauna. It's been demonstrated by thousands of researchers over nearly two centuries that the cycle of random mutation, adaptation, natural selection are valid scientific phenomenon. However, as we shall discuss momentarily, there are some flaws in Darwinian theory, not in all aspects, but nevertheless with postulates that are inconsistent with their observed data, genetic theory, and statistical analysis.
But speaking of this spectacular world, it's important to acknowledge before we get too far into this topic that our universe is wondrous, ordered, and discoverable. It is the aspect of being discoverable that I find it some ways most compelling as God made us humans naturally inquisitive creatures. Unlike any other species, we're capable of talking about talking. We're able to discuss abstract concepts.
We want to explore and learn, always. It's who we are. We know that for centuries, great minds have used their powers of intellect and imagination to explain all sorts of wondrous phenomena. So it stands to reason that God wants us to use these God-given talents to explore the mysteries of the universe and life on Earth.
To be plain, I'm saying God wants us to work at discovering this masterpiece of his creation. After all, we know that one of the obvious human characteristics of Jesus was out of a teacher. His disciples called him Rabbi, or teacher. Our first encounter with Jesus after the Nativity is as a 12-year-old, teaching the learned men in the temple.
We know that the gospels are full of teachings, and in particular parables, which Jesus specifically said he used to teach the people. The point of all this is to say that God has created the natural sciences in a way that lends itself to our discovery. He wants us to pursue that knowledge. The universe God's creation from nothing is fundamentally discoverable, and that's not by accident.
This fact has important implications as we attempted to discern how life on Earth evolved. And to be clear, life on Earth did evolve as a consequence of some, presumably incredibly complex, laws of nature, as created by an Almighty God. It only makes sense that the laws of the natural sciences, even if shrouded in mystery, allow mankind to properly discover God's creation. Our challenge is to discern these laws and not allow ideological bias or religious extremism to influence our conclusions.
But before we get too far along into the implications of Darwinian theory, it's useful to consider other very important evolutionary processes. By the way, I should have opened by saying my prepared remarks are only about 30 minutes. I see a lot of relief on the looks of the faces there. You didn't need to start clapping about that.
So feel free to ask questions or interrupt me at any time you want. That makes it more interesting. I'm totally fine with that. So other evolutionary processes.
First of all, as a starting point, we should note that Catholic Church has never rejected the notion of evolutionary processes, nor has it ever specifically and categorically endorsed any particular theory. Our detractors would like you to believe differently, but they're wrong or simply spreading propaganda. Consistent with the position of the Catholic Church, I believe there are several important evolutionary processes. And that these all have natural science explanations.
Natural science explanations. Even though those explanations may be still locked in much mystery, I do not believe that God somehow forgot something, like DNA or electrons or photons or whatever. And then billions of years into Earth's existence said, oh my gosh, I need to add those back into the mix. It makes no sense for an omnipotent God to make mistakes.
So, for the case of how life started on Earth and how humans came to be, there must be a natural science's explanation. I might come as a surprise, maybe in a little disturbing to some folks, but I'm going to get into that in a bit more here. Don't worry. So, I believe evolutionary processes are real.
The question is which theories are the most accurate, if any. Unfortunately, the term evolution is used for the most part to imply Darwinian evolution. But Darwinism is not completely correct, and most certainly does not obviate the need for God. We'll address the merits of this in a moment.
But for right now, let's recognize that there are multiple evolutionary processes that have occurred during the history of the universe. So let's begin at the beginning. Cosmologists and physicists generally believe that the universe began with a big bang. A theory developed, and you don't want to listen to this.
When a theory developed, actually, is anybody know what a theory was developed? Or who developed it? The major of the creation of the priest. Yeah, a Belgian priest.
George LeMontre. In fact, he and Einstein became very close-res. Excuse me. So I was a Catholic priest that developed the Big Bang Theory.
It's not the intent of this talk to delve into the Big Bang, other than to point out that it's a kind of evolutionary process. The Kobe experiments detected the remnants of the Big Bang, the largest structures ever observed in the universe. While the Big Bang Theory has withstood the test of time for over one century, and has been independently verified by thousands of researchers, it's almost certainly not the full answer concerning the physical evolution of the universe. I say this, because cosmologists and astrophysicists believe that the universe is composed of 68% dark energy, 27% dark matter.
And just 5% is the star stuff, as Carl Sagan famously called it, that we actually observe. Think of the enormity of what we see in the skies. Images from instruments like a Hubble telescope that show us multiple massive galaxies in one picture. Yet that's only 5% of the universe.
That's astounding, and should temper our arrogance to think that we have it all understood. We don't not even close. Then there's chemical evolution. An excellent and compelling example is how carbon formed on the primordial Earth.
Please recall that carbon, which is now, of course, the hated element of the periodic table, thanks to media hysteria over global warming. It's funny to me that an element on the periodical table could generate so much hatred, but it does anyway. But it is actually the backbone, literally and figuratively, of life as we know it. In the early Earth, there was no atmosphere to speak of.
And so there were only a few elements. But the one thing there was a lot of were alpha particles whizzing around. And an alpha particle has four neutrons and four protons. When two alpha particles collide, they form a new element, radioactive beryllium, which has eight protons and eight neutrons.
When they collide, they stick together. But only for one millionth of a trillionth of a second. That's a short time. Now, for the men in the room, I'm going to help you out a little bit to give you so you can comprehend what a millionth of a trillionth of a second is.
That's the amount of time you have to say no when your wife says this address make me look fat, OK? Like that, say? That's a pretty short time. Now, something very special happens.
And that is that another alpha particle comes whizzing in, smashes into those two that have been together for this very short period of time. And they form stable carbon 12th. Now, carbon has 12 neutrons, 12 protons. And it bonds through a process called covalent bonding.
These bonds form tetrahedral structures. The best metaphor I can use is they look like those structures, the Nazis put out on the Normandy beaches to try to prevent our tanks from coming up on the beaches, right? It's a very, very strong geometrical structure. And these bonds are very, very strong.
The point is it's hard to break. And since the bonds are so strong, they can bond thousands of times, forming enormously long and complex molecules. And that's called concatenation. And it's that level of complexity that allows molecules that matter, right?
It's that level of complexity that allows biological structures to form, right? Biology is complex. You need big, big molecules. Carbon is the key to that.
So for our discussion of evolution, the two molecules that matter the most are proteins and DNA, the genetic material. Proteins are made up of large polypeptides consisting of arrangement of amino acids. DNA is made up of a sugar, chain backbone in the famous double helix structure, in which there are four different nucleotide bases that make a digital code that builds the proteins that make up living organisms. So our computers use a binary code, one or zero.
But all life, all life, uses a digital code of four bases, known commonly by the abbreviations AC, G, and T. It is this code which ultimately makes up all of our genes. It turns out that the human genome is made up of many thousands of genes, and about three billion of those digital base pair that make the code. Three billion, a little bit more than three billion.
Oddly enough, the human genome is nearly 98% similar to that of chimpanzees, which is part of why the belief is that we humans, in fact, evolved from chimps. We'll get into that in a bit. Okay, even more bizarrely, the human genome is 50% in common with bananas. Okay, that's really weird.
It's true. Moving along, the next evolutionary process we have is what I might term biochemical. A very good example of this are the ancient bacteria known as cyanobacteria that existed on the surface of the Earth a couple of billion years ago. Without this, so what those bacteria did is they produced oxygen as part of their cellular respiration.
Without that, there's no oxygen in the atmosphere and probably no opportunity for complex life to form. Okay. And then finally, we get to evolutionary biology, which is our principal topic for this evening. One aspect of these evolutionary processes is that in some ways it appears that things just happen without the guiding hand of an almighty God.
I think this is very, very important. Indeed, this observation has caused numerous luminaries of science to make some rather sweeping and I think equally poor comments about the workings of our universe and the role of a God. So one such example of this confusion is rooted in the fact that there's compelling evidence and reason to believe that the natural sciences, our natural world and universe are, one might say, on autopilot, that things just happen. They just evolved because of the laws of nature out of seemingly nothing.
This misperception was famously articulated by the late professor Stephen Hawking when commenting on the modern theories of the origin of the universe and life on the planet said there's nothing left for a God to do. We don't need a God. Okay. He, like some of the other brilliant secular materialist scientists, convolve the metaphysical act of creation with the stochastic reality of the universe and its governing laws.
Creation is not a change. Creation is the origin of all exnehilo. Now, I don't think I'm saying that many things this evening that are tremendously important, but I think what I just said is the single most important thing from this talk. Creation is not a change.
Creation is the origin of all exnehilo. I'm using the word creation in the metaphysical sense, not the common worldly sense. We'd all agree, Michelangelo created the paita. I created this talk, but that's just worldly creation.
Metaphysics refers to that which is beyond physics. In a metaphysical sense, creation out of nothing means there was nothing to begin with, and nothing means absolutely nothing at all, except for God. God did not need any starting materials. He didn't have a bucket of atoms.
He didn't need a textbook full of equations and laws of physics. God creates all of this out of nothing, exnehilo. If you listen carefully to the late professor Hawking or a long list of his supporters, you'll notice that when they speak of nothing, they're actually speaking of something. In fact, they're speaking of very specific some things.
For example, there's a widely accepted principle that particles can just appear out of nowhere in completely empty space because of laws of quantum mechanics and gravity. Decades ago, I had to prove this during my PhD qualifying exam. That was fun. So, as I also had to prove how I could be transported to across the wall to an adjacent room, and I quipped that given the difficulty I was having in my qualifier that I was hoping that that would happen sometime very, very soon.
So, well, there's a law. And again, so as crazy as it sounds, I know that that's true. But space is not nothing. Space is a very specific concept laid out beautifully in Einstein's theory of general relativity.
And the laws of physics, such as quantum tunneling, are also something. Quantum tunneling is crazy. I used to design and build nanoscale structures that use quantum tunneling. I know it's real, but it's something.
It's not nothing. That's a something. If we Catholics were to believe that these things were actually necessary for God to create his universe, then logically we're saying that God is somehow subordinate to or at least dependent upon these somethings. And that's completely inconsistent with our belief in an almighty creator.
Well, all the evolutionary processes I just mentioned, and in fact all natural processes proceed, meaning changes occur based on a variety of enormously complex laws. Things around us are and have been constantly changing, and will no doubt continue to change until the end of time. Space and time continue to be created. That's a crazy idea.
But it's true. The species become extinct. New ones are discovered. In fact, the overwhelming majority of life forms species, flora and fauna, that have existed on the earth, are now extinct.
So that's a pretty amazing statistic. Populations of all living things are constantly changing. The climate is constantly changing. The sun is an extra-burdening up.
It's nuclear fuel. The stars explode. New ones are created. All this brings us back to our fundamental thesis.
Creation is not a change. Creation is the origin of all exnehalo. This is an extremely important concept, and directly impacts our ability to understand the true nature of all evolutionary processes and the role of God. In fact, when discussing such issues with a person of only secular beliefs, it is best to start with that premise.
Let them know that you believe in the natural sciences, which of course God created, and that you have no argument with trying to understand such natural processes. But those are separate and distinct from creation because none of those things existed prior to God's loving act. Well, Darwin and his theory of evolution have evoked bitter controversy for the better part of two centuries. It's interesting to note that he's rarely criticized by secular scientists.
Why is that? Virtually every great scientist has made rather grand mistakes. Take Newton, for example. His laws of physics are still very much in use today.
They'll bridge gets built. They'll build erected. They'll trip to the moon. Put out Newton.
Yet he made a rather large blunder. Newton believed the universe to be deterministic, but that's not correct. It's no casket. Newton also believed that something called ether pushed the planets around the sun.
But that's fantasy. So what did Darwin get wrong? Well, to begin with, is there a sense of theory? Like most theories, it has some very compelling postulates, but also some glaring inconsistencies.
But beyond those factors, which we'll next discuss in some detail, he also got something else very, very wrong. Darwin's explanation of his observations are contained in his now universally debunked principle of pan-genesis. It's described by Darwin, pan-genesis is a sort of blending of inheritable traits. This is wrong.
When Darwin speaks of random mutations, he literally had no idea what was being mutated. Highly enough, at the same time, Darwin was conducting his research. An obscure Austrian monk by the name of Father Gregor Mendel was conducting his famous experiments on peas in the Addi Garden, literally at exactly the same time. They didn't know about each other.
Mendel's work would become the basis of the modern theory of genetics and molecular biology. Most textbooks on the topic refer to the laws of inheritance as Mendelian genetics. Although I do see this less commonly, a consequence of what I will claim is a growing and ubiquitous prejudice against Catholicism and academia and science. I could give a few personal examples of that, but I'm not going to spend the time on that right now.
But Mendel was right, but it took another 100 years for the famous scientist, Watson and Crick, to unlock the mystery of the structure of DNA, the molecule at the heart of genetics. Interestingly, but I suppose not surprisingly, very few evolutionary biologists strictly believe in Darwinism. Very few. By far the most commonly accepted theory now on the evolution of the species is called Neo-Darwinism.
Even the second limitary list in scientific atheists recognize that Darwin's lack of understanding of the laws of genetics is a major shortcoming of his theory. So they've added the term Neo to take that into account and to take into account the whole field of genetics. But this is the stuff to do best. What these scientists actually mean by Neo-Darwinism is what I claim is more accurately termed Mendelian Darwinism.
But I'd rather doubt you're ever going to hear that term, right? Why throw yet another Catholic into the mix? They're just annoying, right? Okay.
Certainly. I blame this on pollen, but it's not the right time of the year. There are other inconsistencies in Darwin's theory of evolution. To begin with, the fossil record does not support the notion of very, very minor changes owing to random mutations followed by adaptation based on survival of this.
Rather, the major fossil formations all indicating massive explosion of life occurring around 550 million years ago. This is commonly called the Cambrian explosion, consistent with the Cambrian period as to find impaling technology. While the Cambrian period was some 65 million years long, it was really a rather short 5 to 10 million year period when most of the explosive growth occurs. The problem for Darwin's theory is that there does not appear to be any evidence of ancestors to these nearly innumerable and varied creatures found in the Cambrian fossil record.
Why? Well, some claim the fossil records were all destroyed. Okay? And it is true that it's pretty hard for fossil to form, right?
It's got to be all just the right conditions. Okay. So there's some argument there. Or they say, well, the ancestors were all very fragile, soft body creatures.
And they couldn't withstand geological events over the eons. Yet we do have pre-Cambrian fossil records, and we even have records of embryos from them. One can hardly think of a more fragile structure than an embryo. So, you know, I don't know that that's the greatest argument.
Also, the fossil record seems to indicate almost the opposite of what Darwin predicted is what in fact occurred. Namely, that there are sudden major changes in life forms, in body plants. Okay? With the referred to body plants.
Major changes, followed then by tens of millions of years of gradual modification. So what are literally opposite of what Darwin postulated? A more fundamental problem with the Ogarwini and evolutionary theory is that it does not explain how a process of very, very minor modification, even when considered over millions of years, can explain the formation of these new body plants. As an example, one animal that Darwin studied in great detail is a pigeon.
And however time, it developed phenotypic changes consistent with natural selection and adaptation. Okay? But it's one thing for a pigeon to undergo changes in appearance in some capabilities. It's quite another thing for a pigeon to suddenly turn into a raptor.
Okay? So, Agassive, a colleague, some might say a nemesis of Darwin, once Riley remarked, in the end, they're all still just pigeons. Agassive goes on to make a point that there's no need for have God directly make the changes we see in the evolutionary data, but rather that he caused all of the laws into existence, which have made those changes. That's a brilliant comment, in my opinion.
And centuries prior, Santa Quina says literally the same thing. Now we come to my favorite topic. The one that sparked the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, which was a complete farce and a circus, which was mainly William Jennings Bryant and Clarence Darrow flexing their muscles and trying to become even more famous. Many people, primarily Protestants, but also Catholics are very, very disturbed by the implication that humans perhaps evolve from chimpanzees as asserted by Darwin.
And by the way, as I said a moment ago, arginate code and out of a chimpanzee are better than 98% in common. So Darwin seems to have gotten that one right. Okay? Well, I believe the real angst here is based on the assumption that if humans evolve from ships, then that implies that Christ is also a descendant of a ship.
This is where we must now appeal to sacred scripture for clarity. We humans evolve in some manner, a manner which I believe is still not fully understood. But that is the science side of the equation, if you will. What makes human specials special is that scripture tells us that we're made in the image and likeness of God.
Of course, the atheist loves this, right? Because I go, well, that means the image and likeness of God is like a chimp. Thank you. You've just made my point.
Wrong, wrong. What makes us in the image and likeness of God, what makes us decidedly different than a chimp is not anything to do with science. It's that God endowed us humans with a trans-physical soul. And that's not a question that science can answer.
It's a matter of faith. It's a matter of the supernatural. Science has nothing to say on the topic, nor can it? So the fact that it is highly likely that humans did evolve from so-called lesser creatures is no conflict whatsoever with our fundamental Catholic beliefs.
It's not a conflict with Catholicism. Indeed, the Catholic Church has never, some are early dismissed. Evolutionary biology is wrong. The Church has also been correctly careful to not unequivocally endorse our winning evolution as settled science.
And if I may, I'd like to tell you that when you hear somebody say the science is settled, you should proceed with caution. Because they're probably not the sharpest pack in the box. There's very, very little science that's truly settled. I could easily give dozens of examples of scientific facts that have later been proven to not really be quite correct.
So while little science is settled, I do believe that Darwin's classic on the origin of the species is a masterful work. It's brilliant. He's also not a genius, and he's not faultless. As I stated earlier, there are many inconsistencies in neo-Darwinian theory.
And we should all be free to discuss and debate those complex matters of science. Perhaps the most perplexing issue of all, and I think this is a very, very interesting topic, the thing that's most perplexing has to do with information. Anybody want to take a stab at why I'm saying that? Why is it information?
DNA, who said that? Yeah, and what about the DNA? It has to be a puzzle. Correct, right.
And so in the Cambrian explosion, there had to then be an explosion of genes, DNA, right? And that's information. Well, where the heck did the information come from? Usually information implies some intelligent person, you know, somebody's doing software code and they put this information together.
Where did the information come from? I mean, that's, that's, so this is a very powerful concept. So, so how did this explosion of information during an exceptionally short period in geologic time come to be? I don't think that has been rigorously addressed by the scientific community.
Now, you may wonder, well, why hasn't it been studied thoroughly and comprehensively? The answer is that those who have attempted to do so have often been bitterly criticized and ultimately ostracized from the scientific community. In some cases, preeminent, respected scientists have actually been fired from their positions, owing to presenting compelling scientific data and analysis that challenges some of the postulates of neo-darwinism. So, in other words, some people have allowed neo-darwinian theory to become an ideology and that it is beyond, you are not allowed to challenge that whatsoever.
And that's, that's a scary thing. That's, that's not science. That's ideology, okay? So I believe that there still remain many complex causal mechanisms which drive evolutionary processes that even today we still do not fully comprehend.
Darwin's theory does not fully explain this and neither does neo-darwinism. I also do not believe that the answer is so-called intelligent design. And please, please, please really pay attention to what I'm about to say. Because some of you might say, whoa, I've agreed with you so far, John, but that, you know, wait a second, you're going too far.
So, let me be clear about the term intelligent design which has been used by both atheists and atheists to mean very different things. For example, some people believe that intelligent design is synonymous with so-called young-earth creationism. I think that young-earth creationism is representative regis lack of scientific merit. I, of course, do recognize that our universe has the imprint of an infinitely intelligent being.
What I'm trying to articulate is that I do not believe that God forgot something when he set creation in motion. I do not believe that God must call upon so-called intelligent agents. In order to make his wondrous, natural world, our earth and firmament work properly. God is infinite intelligence and has such as not limited in any matter whatsoever.
God does not need to make course corrections as it were. I mean, imagine if God were on earth presently and he decided to make a cross-country driving trip. He turns out what he wants to see, chooses a route, heads down the road. Do any of us believe that as God is driving along, he'll suddenly realize, oh, I picked a bad route.
Or had I gone a different way? There was some interesting sight that he could have seen, but somehow missed because of his mistake. Of course not. Well, actually, there's one exception.
If he had plugged into Google Maps and it had him headed down I-85 into Atlanta at Rush Howard, you know, he'd probably yell at the GPS saying, get behind me. And one can hardly blame him for losing his temper. Okay. I want to be clear, to not convolve the notion of course corrections with miracles.
The Catholics believe in the supernatural. We believe that Jesus performed many miracles during his ministry on earth. And we believe that God in his infinite wisdom performs miracles to this day. Of course, miracles are rather rare as one might expect, given these are acts of God.
But they're no less real. So don't miracles in a way suggest God is making a course correction. I don't believe so. Because miracles are all part of the mystery of our salvation.
I am not aware of any miracles recognized by the Magister of the Church, which are believed to be for the purpose or a better understanding of the laws of nature. I will also characterize miracles as sort of point events, by which I mean the address of some very specific point in time and space and some very specific aspect of the story of our salvation. Again, I'm not aware of miracles that have cleared up a scientific conundrum or rectified a problem with our understanding of the laws of nature. Miracles are a matter of faith, not science.
So my talk this evening, as TJ said in the introduction, was sponsored by the Center for Evangelical Catholicism. Therefore, it seems appropriate for us, as we wrap up this evening, to consider just how can we evangelize to our neighbors who may either have serious doubts about God's role in creation of the natural sciences or why God is necessary when evolution seems to be on autopilot. I sincerely believe that the starting point of any such discussion should be to emphasize that since God created the natural sciences, there can be no conflict. I think St.
Thomas Aquinas is the one who said truth cannot deny truth. It's just simply illogical. But perhaps more to the point is to strongly emphasize that creation is not a change. Evolution is all about changes.
That's not what creation is. Creation is the origin of all ex-nehalos. So if somebody says, well, what came before creation, that's a completely specious question. There are no words.
There's no time. There's no numbers. There's no equations. There's no laws.
Now that's a huge mystery. Okay, I get it. All right. That's a huge mystery.
But it's not a change. It's not like I went from having water to now having ice because I stuck it in the freezer. That's not what's going on. Okay, so God's creative act is enacted metaphysics and therefore is beyond the realm of explanation by the natural sciences.
That's a key point I would try to make. To try to discern a role for God in creation by using the natural laws is sort of like trying to define a word by using that word in the definition. And the only person that's allowed to do that is Bill Clinton. It all depends on what the definition of is.
It's one of the great lines of all time. Anyway. So what's the next step? The next step is in the discussion might be to point out that our world and universe is constantly changing in seemingly mysterious and manifold ways.
Again, this presents no conflict with an Almighty God of infinite wisdom and love because metaphysical creation is not the change. Creation from nothing means nothing and nothing at all. What you're able to make this point then the next step in my view is to note there are several important evolutionary processes. Biological evolution is just one of them and chronologically the last one.
The Catholic Church believes in evolutionary processes and has never rejected an notion that humans evolved in some manner. As I said, the universe is discoverable. God wants us to go and figure these things out. So there has to be some natural sciences explanation for us to go try to figure out.
The issue is that in these processes are still not understood. It's the point I would make to the person you're discussing this with. Darwinism, while a giant step forward does not seem to be the full answer, but we Catholics fundamentally believe that there is a more refined explanation and scientists should be free to explore all sorts of theories free from ideological bias or religious extremism. Okay?
And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have.